Reporting can be a time-consuming part in the daily routine of a radiology department. The typical radiology reporting workflow involves the radiologist looking through a plurality of images of an imaging study and writing or dictating a narrative report describing the observed findings. Along with the finding description, oftentimes the radiologists would also include references to specific image slices (e.g., “Neurofibroma in the superior right extraconal space (series 5, image 104) measuring approximately 17 mm”). These specific references often correspond to key images.
The report is created and stored in the Radiology Information System (RIS), while the images are stored in the Picture Archiving System (PACS). In the PACS user interface, tools are available to make basic measurements, e.g., length or mean Hounsfield Unit HU value in a region of interest (ROI), or annotations, e.g., arrows, to mark interesting regions in the image. Usually there is an integrated solution such that images in the PACS are more or less linked to the patient health record. However, there is no association between the images and/or annotations on the images and the findings in the report.